About the World - Telegraphing Without Wires

In these days the layman is apt to protect himself in a cloak of blasé acquiescence from the ever-fresh demands upon his mental powers made by mechanical wonders. But the most fatigued and agnostic intelligence will scarcely fail to respond to the proposal of the electrical "wizards" to telegraph from one part of the earth's surface to another without the use of wires. In Europe, a young electrician named Marconi has actually succeeded in transmitting and receiving messages through a distance of nine miles, with no connection between the sending and receiving instruments save that furnished by the circumambient ether. Marconi has found that when a transmitting instrument — which is so simple in its elements that one is tempted to describe it in detail — is made to utter electrical vibrations on the Herz radiator principle, with a rapidity of 225,000,000 vibrations per second, these waves seem to be carried through the ether, if unobstructed by material obstacles, equally in all directions, and his delicate receiver has no difficulty in receiving and recording them across the Bristol Channel. The feat is possible only in places where an unobstructed expanse of ether interposes between the transmitting and receiving instruments.

The idea of wireless telegraphy is no new one. Men have been thinking of it almost ever since the Morse inventions came to the world. The astonishing Mr. Edison had his try, and abandoned the attempt for more immediately promising work. Aside from the young Italian, Marconi, Nikola Tesla has the most ambitious projects in this direction and, indeed, Mr. Tesla contemplates the possibility of an even vaster feat, for he believes he can transmit electrical power without wires. Should he accomplish such a thing, the bounds of electrical utility will be extended more radically than by any other discovery the world has seen. Mr. Tesla is not yet ready to publish the details of his experiments, but he has explained to interviewers that it is the static electricity of the earth which he will exploit in furnishing the power necessary for his wireless transmission. He has already sent signals via the earth current to and fro through a distance of twenty miles, and announces unhesitatingly that he shall in time be able to telegraph without wires to any part of the earth's surface.

Tesla used a striking and simple simile in explaining how he intended to disturb and capture the earth's electricity. He said to his interviewer: "Suppose the whole earth to be like a hollow rubber ball filled with water, and at one place I have a tube attached to this, with a plunger in the tube. If I press upon the plunger the water in the tube will be driven into the rubber ball, and as the water is practically incompressible, every part of the surface of the ball will be expanded. If I withdraw the plunger, the water follows it and every part of the ball will contract. Now, if I pierce the surface of the ball several times and set tubes and plungers at each place, the plungers in these will vibrate up and down in answer to every movement which I may produce in the plunger of the first tube. If I were to produce an explosion in the centre of the body of water in the ball, this would set up a series of vibrations in the whole body. If I could then set the plunger in one of the tubes to vibrating in consonance with the vibrations of the water, in a little while and with the use of a very little energy, I could burst the whole thing asunder."

In the same way, Mr. Tesla proposes, with a comparatively small power uttered in vibrations of marvellous rapidity, to urge into action the terrestrial current. The inventor thinks it possible that his machine when perfected may be set up, one in each great centre of civilization, to flash the news of the day's or hour's history immediately to all the other cities of the world; and stepping for a sentence out of the realms of the workaday world, he offers a prophecy that any communication we may have with other stars will certainly be by such a method — a prophecy which has all the picturesque and imaginative charm to be desired, together with an unusual quality of prudence and safety.